- TikTok has created a new generation of digital stars who have built massive audiences on the app.
- But many creators are still experimenting with how to make money.
- Here’s how much TikTokers earn from brand deals, song promotions, livestreams, its Creator Fund, and other programs.
TikTok ushered in a new generation of digital stars. But for many creators, it can be difficult to make money from TikTok alone.
Unlike YouTube, which has a well-established ads program that shares a percentage of ad revenue for longer videos with qualifying creators, TikTok has only recently begun experimenting with splitting ad dollars with some of its influencers.
Outside of ad-revenue sharing, TikTok has several built-in monetization tools like virtual “gifts,” as well as a Creator Fund to pay users with at least 10,000 followers and 100,000 views in a 30-day period for their videos.
Thus far, the Creator Fund has represented a small piece of the pie when it comes to influencer earnings, creators told Insider.
Read more about how much six TikTok influencers earned from the Creator Fund
Outside of the Creator Fund, TikTok also began in 2023 testing a Creativity Program meant to pay users “higher average gross revenue” for videos that are longer than one minute. It also launched a $6 million fund for augmented-reality effect creators.
Despite its early tests in ad-revenue sharing and a slew of different payment programs, many TikTok creators still rely on brand deals for the bulk of their earnings.
Alex Ojeda, a waterpark creator who has around 8 million followers on TikTok, told Insider in 2022 that his rate for a single sponsored video on the app was $20,000.
Read more about how Ojeda is using TikTok to make money and build a career in the waterpark industry
How much TikTokers make from the Creator Fund
While brand deals tend to be the most lucrative option for creators on TikTok, many still enroll in the Creator Fund to see what they can score each month.
Creator Fund payments aren’t calculated based on views alone, but the effective payouts for videos have amounted to a few pennies for every one thousand video plays, some TikTokers have told Insider. Top TikTok creators like Hank Green and MrBeast have spoken out about the low payouts, with Green revealing in a January 2022 YouTube video that he was paid what amounted to between $0.02 and $0.03 for every one thousand views on TikTok.
Personal-finance influencer Preston Seo, who now has 2.4 million TikTok followers, earned a total of about $1,664 from the Creator Fund between January 2021 and May 2021, according to documentation he shared with Insider. His TikTok account earns between $9 to $38 a day on average. Other creators who shared their fund earnings with Insider reported similar daily payouts.
Read more about Seo’s TikTok strategy as a personal-finance creator
How much TikTokers make from its ad-revenue sharing program, Pulse
The Creator Fund isn’t the only in-app monetization tool for TikTok creators.
The company also shares some ad revenue with creators through a contextual-advertising program called TikTok Pulse.
In May 2022, the company announced brands could buy ads alongside “the top 4%” of content in different categories like cooking, beauty, and fashion. It said it would split 50% of the revenue with the creator whose video appeared before the in-feed ad. Only creators with at least 100,000 followers qualify for the program.
As with the Creator Fund, the first two payments from TikTok Pulse have been disappointing, creators told Insider.
Eight influencers who shared their monthly payouts, view counts, and revenue for every 1,000 video views (RPM) from Pulse earned between a few pennies and $17 in their first two monthly payments. The creators had between a few hundred thousand and a few million followers; Several make content around gaming, while others film lifestyle videos.
Read more about how much TikTokers are earning from Pulse as the app starts to share ad revenue
TikTok is testing new funds to pay longer form and AR creators
In 2023, the company introduced two other fund-based programs designed to encourage specific types of content creation.
The first, its Creativity Program meant to reward creators that post videos longer than one minute, is restricted to users that have at least 10,000 followers and have achieved 100,000 video views in the past 30 days. Users can only participate in the Creativity Program or the Creator Fund, not both.
TikTok’s Effect Creator Rewards program, announced in May 2023, offers augmented-reality creators a base pay of $700 and up to $14,000 for effects that appear in at least 500,000 videos. At launch, the $6 million fund is only available to users who are at least 18 years old and are based in the US, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, and Germany.
Read more about TikTok’s new fund for augmented-reality creators
Other built-in TikTok monetization features
Some TikTokers also make money by receiving virtual “gifts” during livestreams or in other parts of the app, which can be converted into cash. ASMR content creator Lucy Davis told Insider she earns between $20 and $300 each time she goes live, for example.
Jakey Boehm, an Australian creator who livestreams on TikTok while he sleeps, earned $34,000 from TikTok Live in a single month.
“It’s seriously life-changing money,” he told Insider. “The first week I made about $5,000 dollars, and that’s where I thought ‘This is big, I can do something really crazy here.'”
Read more about how creators are making money from TikTok’s built-in monetization features:
How TikTok creators make money from brand sponsorships
Because virtual gifts, Creator Fund payments, and Pulse earnings don’t pay the bills on their own, many influencers turn to brand deals to earn money from their TikTok content. Rates for a sponsored post can vary widely depending on a creator’s follower count and content niche.
Seo, for example, said he charged about $600 per sponsored post on TikTok.
Symphony Clarke, an Atlanta-based TikTok creator with about 200,000 fans, told Insider that she charged between $350 and $600 for a sponsored post.
Other TikTok influencers earn money by making content for companies to use on a brand’s own TikTok account. Fitness creator Salha Aziz, for instance, charges hundreds of dollars to create UGC content for brands to use in marketing campaigns.
Here’s how much creators are earning from brand deals:
- Colin Rocker (76,000 followers) shares his rates for sponsored TikTok videos and his monthly earnings from brand deals
- College football player Jon Seaton (1.8 million followers) shares how much he made from brand deals in 18 months
- Naomi Melanie Leanage (about 511,000 followers) shares her minimum rate and earnings for sponsored content
- Software engineer and creator Matt Upham (about 520,000 followers) shares his brand deal earnings
- Basketball creators Brandon (about 1.1 million followers) and Jayden Beloti (1.2 million followers) share their monthly earnings from the Creator Fund and brand deals
- Comedy creator Pooja Tripathi (about 37,500 followers) shares her earnings from sponsored posts
- Lillian Zhang (about 33,000 followers), lists her rates for sponsored posts
- Alex Ojeda (about 8.3 million followers) shares his sponsored content rates for his water-park themed videos
- Personal finance influencer Erin Confortini (around 235,000 followers) lists out her earnings from brand deals, UGC, and affiliates
- Jalyn Baiden (about 21,000 followers) is a TikTok nano influencer who charges around $1,000 for a sponsored post
- Tejas Hullur (around 588,000 followers) said his fee for a sponsored TikTok post starts at $3,000
- Salha Aziz (about 20,000 followers) charges brands $160 for a single video
- Deanna Giulietti (around 1.8 million followers) made over $500,000 from brand partnerships across TikTok and Instagram in 2021
- College influencer Harry Raftus (about 1.3 million followers) explains how much he earns from song promos and alcohol-related brand deals
- Symphony Clarke (about 200,000 followers), who makes videos about thrift shopping, shares her rates for brand sponsorships
- Fashion creator Carolina Freixa (around 763,000 followers) tells us how much money she makes from brand campaigns
- Skincare influencer Young Yuh (about 1.7 million followers) shares how he calculates his pay rate
- Dana Hasson (around 2.9 million followers), who posts recipes and lifestyle videos, explains how much she makes from brand deals
- TikTok family The McFarlands (about 3.8 million followers) on how much they earn from brand deals
One of the most popular ways to earn money as a TikToker is by promoting songs in videos. Music marketers and record labels regularly pay TikTok users to post on the app in an attempt to make a new track go viral.
TikTok-creator trio Nicole, Natalie, and Nika Taylor, who now have around 12.7 million followers on the app, told Insider they charge $750 to promote a song in a single video, $1,400 for two videos, and $2,000 for three videos.
Read more about how much TikTok creators get paid to promote songs on the app
Music producers can also make money on TikTok by creating sped up, slowed down, or remixed versions of tracks for artists and record labels.
Read more about how much creators get paid to promote new tracks on TikTok:
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